Billy's jornal

Ok, so I have a small thing that I need to get off my chest. Apparently I am the only one amongst the group of people I hang out with that is bothered by, or has even noticed this. My own girlfriend has told me I am thinking way too much about this, that this doesn’t matter. But dammit this really bugs me and I feel like it’s important enough to talk about. This is one of those things that has been nagging at me for a really long time now and I just want to rant about it here. So if you’re on board for that then let’s go.

Ok, so I’m going to sidetrack back into the wacky world of wrestling for a moment. Sorry this thing is going to be a bit video heavy, but if you’re interested they are worth checking out. Also a side note, the links in here will be bracketed for your ease. By this point in time almost everyone who is aware of professional wrestling is also aware that it is scripted and predetermined. That’s not to say fake however. While the matches themselves and the storylines surrounding them are planned out in advance that doesn’t stop the actual performers from going out in front of an audience of thousands and actually performing. Yes, the wrestlers know who win before the match starts, but they will still have to go out there and have the match. They still have to go out there and entertain the masses. They have to go out there and convince a room full of people that what they are seeing is real. These performers have to make a room full of people and the world at large believe in and react to the pure madness that they are seeing

All right, if you’re reading this I can assume one of two things: you either enjoyed what I wrote last time or you just want to see how much of a dumpster fire this will become. Either way, I’m happy you’re here. So let’s crack on.

Now, if you read what I wrote last time you’ll know that I’m attempting to address the Nuckelavee Grimm and how I feel like it was misused in RWBY Volume 4. If you’re jumping on now, a quick recap. I feel like the Nuckelavee Grimm was so goddam cool and had such a good build up that it was a disappointment to see it die in less than 10 minutes. So, in my insanity I decided to write about how I would do it.

Ok, so by now anyone who is reading this has seen the finale to RWBYvolume 4. This was an interesting volume to say the least. It did a lot of good things for the series, but it’s shortcomings can’t be ignored. So I’m going to try and address one such shortcoming here, and discuss how I would have liked it to be. I’m doing this because I’m allowed to do that because I’m a sarcastic jerk who thinks way too highly of his own opinion. So I’m going to discuss a few spoilers, so for those who haven’t seen the finale can stop here. If not I can either assume you don’t care for the series (in which case, why are you here?), or you don’t care about spoilers. So let that be a warning for the rest of you.​Mild Spoilers Ahead.

All right, I’m going to level with you folks. I’ve been on a bit of a Disney Bender of late. Just one of those things where an idea pops into my head, and all I can think is, “I need to do that. Right now.” So after a few days of binging on all those classic Disney films and the nostalgia bomb that was subsequently dropped on me I started to wonder what exactly it was that I loved about these films. There are many reasons I assure you, but for now I am going to focus on one aspect in particular.

Well…shit. I’m well and truly screwed now. Damn you. Damn you Zelda. Why do you have to do this to me now? Anyone who has read my previous articles about how many things I have to play or read will know that I have a lot of shit to do. Like, a lot. I know, I know; first world problems. But dammit leave me be. Now, for those who may not know it yet, I am a huge fan of the Legend of Zelda franchise. Like, just a massive fan. Anytime something remotely related to Zelda pops up I pay attention. I have been a massive mark for this franchise for many years, and I imagine I will be for many more to come. Just ask any of my friends, they will tell you how just how bad I’ve got it for this series. This series has effectively made its servant. I will do what Zelda says, when Zelda says it.

Really? Really Bioware? You guys have to drop this on me now? I already have little time to work, keep up a vague form of a social life and try to catch up on all the forms of entertainment that I have fallen woefully behind on. And now you’re going to tell me that in two months I’m going to have the new Mass Effect game on my plate as well?​

Ok, at the time of writing this I have just finished watching Izetta: The Last Witch so I’m a little emotional, if you haven’t seen that series you really should check it out. While I will absolutely be talking about that in the future I just don’t have time to talk about it now you just gotta bear with me.

Ok, so as you may have guessed by the title, I have a problem. Hopefully it is not a problem that affects only me. It is a problem that will only get worse now that Christmas is over and Boxing Day approaches. It is a rather embarrassing problem that I have given my position as a nerd and general practitioner of the anti-social arts. It’s a problem that continues to baffle me as time moves on.

So hopefully you’ll all forgive me for this being short but I just got off a night shift and am hilariously tired. However, I can’t keep some of these things to myself so I am going to unload some of my thoughts onto you unfortunate people who have decided to read this. Pokémon: Sun and Moon came out recently, and being the colossal goddam Pokémon fan that I am picked up at midnight. Having played it for a real long time by now I have a few things that I would like to talk about.

So I got a delightful little surprise recently. I found out that all three Mass Effect are now backwards compatible on the Xbox 1. Now as the Mass Effect trilogy is one of my favorite things ever made on this planet, I was understandably excited. The characters come to life in a way that I have rarely seen in video games, and the story keeps me invested throughout. Sure the ending of Mass Effect 3 was terrible (we’ll talk about that later) but the overwhelming majority of this series is amazing.

Sorry Folks, short article today. But also a non-wrestling related one, see I do other things. So, I got some good news today. I wake up, nothing new. I check my phone, not a lot going on. I open my phone, some talk from my friends, that’s normal. I check the news, and that’s when I see it, the glorious ray of light in this darkening world of winter. That is when I found out that it was time to celebrate. It was time to celebrate because Warner Bros. Animation has announced the series Young Justice is returning in a long hoped-for Season 3.

Ok, so by now any of you reading this should know that I am a huge goddamn fan of Godzilla. I grew up watching the movies, bought any toys I could find, even pretended to be Godzilla in my youth. I shake with excitement at any news regarding one of my favorite franchises. So imagine just how excited I was when it was revealed that Toho, the original studio of the Godzilla films, was making another entry in the series. I went into full media blackout in regards to this film. I wanted to go in knowing as little as possible. For the most part I succeeded, there were a few slip ups in regards to certain aspects, but by and large I was able to avoid any plot details that could have dampened my experience.

This is something that was brought about by reading Scott’s great article on wrestling. It’s a very good look at the state of affairs in the company. You can check that out HERE! Now, I felt like doing something a little different from the route Scott has taken. So instead of reviewing a show right now, I will be running down a list of my favourites performers performing in the WWE today.

This will be another one of those things where I give you all a quick glimpse into where my mind has wandered over the past few days. Again, some may be important, some may not

1. Overwatch: I’ve been playing Overwatch pretty much since it came out. It’s the perfect blend of insanity, fun, and competitiveness for me. Where else am I going to be able to play as a hyper-intelligent gorilla who uses a giant electrical gun? Or what accounts to a ghost dual-wielding shotguns? Or a guy on roller-blades who heals wounds with sound waves?

It is an undeniable and may I say fundamental quality of man that when faced with extinction…every alternative is preferable. These are the words that kick off season six of Red vs Blue. These are the words that draw us in. Throughout the first seasons of the show we only got snippets of the larger conflict taking place. Season six brings to light of the conflict that gave rise to Project Freelancer, namely the fight against the aliens. Agent Washington describes Project Freelancer as one of the “silver bullet” ideas to turn the tide of the war. The situation sounded brutal and dire. Washington painted a gloomy picture of the situation that I was eager to see in these prequel seasons.

Unfortunately I will have to keep this brief as it is early in the morning and I work night-shifts. I know I said a series of articles about my take on the Freelancer Saga would be coming, but I have to make this one short digression I’ll start out by saying that until recently Gone Homewas a P.C exclusive game until very recently so I had not had the chance to play it. It came to me strongly recommended by my friend Lee. I had never seen him so adamant about something like this before. Lee is a person who I can totally trust with my gaming or entertainment life without worry, so for him to tell me to literally drop what I was doing to get this game caught my attention. Needless to say, I was not let down. If you the reader have had a chance to play before seeing this, I hope you will agree that this game gave us a unique experience that I hadn’t really gotten before. Once again I hope any readers who have already played the game will agree.I fear that I can’t say too much about Gone Home because I don’t want to ruin the experience for anyone. If you have the opportunity to go into this game blind, I strongly encourage you to do so. Lee told me not to google anything about the title, look for nothing on the internet, to go in with as little information as possible. So I did. And I was rewarded for keeping myself in the dark on this one. I will say again, if you haven’t yet played this game and know nothing about it….keep it that way. Go in with fresh eyes like I did and you will have a very interesting time.

Let me just start this out by saying that I am a huge Rooster Teeth fanboy. I remember in high school when the first episode of the series Red vs. Blue debuted. That was a good time; I was immediately hooked by the fact that the people at a fledgling company called Rooster Teeth were using a science fiction action game to tell a story where the big point is that nothing happens. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. The humor was amazing, the characters were amazingly memorable, and the story very quickly drew me into the world these people were creating. Now Rooster Teeth is a massive company that is involved in many different projects and even foster an amazing online community the likes of which I have rarely seen. But it’s always Red vs. Blue that brings me back.

For now I’m going to keep this brief as at the time of writing this I am exhausted. I’m going to be vague here to try and limit spoilers for those who don’t know what happened. Chances are by this point many people know of that big death of a character in a beloved ongoing series. You all know who and what I mean. It was a shocking thing that people hoping wouldn’t happen. And yet it did. Immediately there were a number of fans who were compiling evidence claiming that the death was a fake, that it was all smoke and mirrors. That it didn’t happen. They claim that not everything is as it seems. That there is reason to hope that this character will be alive for us to continue to enjoy.

Keep in mind that this was being written before the new trailer came out, so any speculation here may be proved hilariously wrong. As we are all aware by now there was that shiny new poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakensreleased recently. Of course I, like almost every other person on the planet, poured over every detail of it. I will now give my super late, and rather brief, impressions on the poster.First things first, I noticed there no Luke Skywalker to be found anywhere on this poster. This was kinda odd to me because Luke had that cool voice over in the previous trailer talking about his family and how the force was strong with them. Perhaps he was left off the poster deliberately; maybe Luke only has a small role in the movie. Or maybe they couldn’t put Luke onto the poster without revealing large spoilers for his character.

Of course it was hard not to notice the other important characters from the original trilogy. Good old Han Solo and Princess Leia. There’s nothing super important in this particular case, just fun to see Han Solo being all roguish it up again. Going back to my previous point, it’s interesting that Han and Leia are featured on the poster but Luke is not.

Another interesting thing to note is how the new and presumably main characters are presented on the posters. We see John Boyega’s character firmly on the Light side of the poster, not much of a surprise really. What interested me was that Daisy Ridley’s character on the Dark side, rather close to the character Kylo Ren. Now this could just be coincidence, maybe they put her there because there was no more room on the poster, maybe it means something more. Perhaps this is a clue that her character is about to start down the path to the dark side, perhaps she shares a particular bond with Kylo Ren. Who knows?

Of course I have to mention that thing in the background that looks suspiciously like another giant space station. I could be wrong but that looks like a Death Star 3.0. If that’s the case then you really have to admire the Empire’s stick to it attitude. After all, third time’s the charm. If that thing does turn out to be another super weapon to blow up planets I can’t help but wonder how that conversation went.

“Hey, what was that giant space thing with the laser that we keep building but is always destroyed?”

We’ve all been there. We all have that one boss who made us pull our hair out or try and throw our controller through the screen. Then again, some boss battles are just so cool that they stay with us, that we can look back on fondly. These are the battles that we can recount to our friends

I will start this off by saying that I am a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. The characters, the gameplay, the hilariously convoluted plots; I love them all. So imagine how amazingly excited

I was when Metal Gear Solid V was announced. Watching all of that gorgeous gameplay footage, hearing all of these badass new features that they had added to the game, and hearing all the little tidbits from the plot was enough to make me crazy, to make me crave this game with every fibre of my being. This sounded like everything that I could have ever wanted in a Metal Gear Solid game. Nothing was going to ruin this experience for me. I was going to marathon this game and I was going to love every minute of it.

The Spartan ProgramAh yes, the Halo universe, one of the more interesting science fiction settings that I have come across in all of my adventures in nerd-dom. This one had it all: far flung worlds at the edge of the galaxy, new and interesting technologies, fleets of ships exploring space and discovering new and exciting places, the alien races hell-bent on wiping out humanity, and of course, the super-soldiers. No one who has had any form of involvement with the Halo franchise will ever forget the main character and mascot of the series, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117. Throughout the games we witness the Master Chief perform incredible feats and general moments of ass-kickery as he battles the alien Covenant. And it was all so glorious, watching this genetically engineered badass fight the alien menace and win.

I will be the first person to say that I may not know what I’m doing. As I am writing the story for A little Off the Top I am learning new things about who the characters are, about the world they live in, and just how goddam crazy I want to make that world. All of this will hopefully lead me to find different ways to make the story that much better and that much more enjoyable for the people who read it, and hopefully for the artist who brings my insane ramblings to life (talking to you, Jazz).

Those who know me knew there couldn’t be any other choice for the top spot. This was the moment that defined my childhood. This is the one moment that I keep coming back too. No matter how many times I see it, this scene still makes me tingle. The scene was executed very well, from Gohan’s reluctance to fight, including the sacrifice of Android 16, up until the final transformation.